Hopscotch Seedlings and Saplings had a fun week of learning focussed on growing plants, using the nursery rhyme ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’ as their inspiration.  They visited our Eco garden to see the little area that pre-school will be taking care of, and where they will showcase their learning at the Open Gardens weekend in June. 

The children found a large patch of mint growing in their raised bed, and thought it smelled wonderful.  This led to the class discussing what they could use mint for. The children were very interested to find out that they could use it in cooking, and then worked together (with staff) to make some delicious pea and mint soup!  The children then thought of different vegetables that they might use if they were going to make more soup, and were expert chefs for the day.  Once the soup was ready, the children sampled the it then used a tally chart to record what they thought about it.

In their nursery rhyme time, the class continued to look at what things plants and seeds need in order to grow well.  The children then planted their bean seeds that sprouted previously, and watered them well to give them a really good start.

In maths the older children, in Saplings Class, worked on recognising numerals by putting pegs onto tree pictures, taking care to match the numeral to the correct number of ‘apples’.  This also helped them to practise their one-to-one correspondence skills, and continue to develop their ability to count out an amount of items from a group.

Our Saplings children continued to practise mark-making and took the opportunity to put down their pencils and use paintbrushes and mud instead, creating beautiful art work.  In Seedlings the children used paint in plastic wallets, which allowed them to exercise their fingers for fine motor skills, ready for writing.

Staff looked at the artist Kandinsky with the children this week too.  The children designed their own artwork, inspired by Kandinsky, and cut out concentric circles, sticking them together to create colourful flower pictures: wowing staff with their scissor skills. 

We are now all looking forward to Open Gardens and can’t wait to see our flowers and plants on display on June 6th & 7th; come and join us if you are free!